As it Should Be
by StoicStella
Summary: As the war with Naraku draws to a head Sango's greatest concerns are for her brother, but will she grow to regret that.


**Fandom:** Inuyasha  
**Warnings:** mild violence  
**Characters/Pairings:** Mild Sango/Miroku Mild Kagome/Inuyasha  
**Word Count:** 2643  
**Notes:** This is for chiquitaqueen who has been a fantastic friend with a great listening ear, and sound advice when I've needed it. Happy Birthday! I'll blame any OOC-ness on my having not seen this show or read this manga in over a year (probably closer to two) and any grammar crazyness or general confusing bits on the fact that I was writing while also saying "If you don't stop hitting your brother and pulling that dogs ears you are going to your room." But really I just haven't written Inuyasha in a long time is nervous I hope you enjoy it.

**Sango **

* * *

She'd taken refuge in a small village for the night, Kirara tucked neatly under her arm, her bone boomerang slung firmly over her shoulder, her lips numb with mumbled praise. It hadn't taken long for her to find a family that would offer her hospitality. Her fame as a demon-slayer proceeded her, and she got by. 

It was enough.

While she looked for Kohaku, everything that wasn't death was enough. He'd slipped through her fingers too often now for her to rest. Sango needed to find her brother. She needed to see him even if it was nothing more than a shell of who he used to be. If he was gone, then she would end it for good, and she would follow. If he could be saved, then she would save him.

It didn't matter which end they'd find. Either way, she was not stopping until she found Kohaku.

"How long will this continue?" Asks the monk. She has stopped speaking to him on the rare occasion that he catches up. He wants her to stop searching out her brother. He wants her to come back and fight in their last stand against Naraku. He wants her to help weaken the forces, he says she is able, maybe even destined. She knows that this is all a distraction, a clever bit of web that Naraku is stringing out away from her. She isn't completely naive.

It doesn't mean she doesn't want.

Oh, how she wants.

She wants, and she can have. If she is persistent; If she is thrifty; If she is hungry enough, she can have it all. She can find what she is looking for, away from the bright shimmering promises of jewel shards and villainy. She can find something simple and real and cling to it, for a little while.

**Miroku**

* * *

The wind scar has ripped even wider this week. If there wasn't so much to be done the pain alone would keep him in bed. He almost wants to find a secluded piece of wood and let it devour him, or better yet, he can take himself and Naraku into oblivion together. He'd do it too, if there was any sort of guarantee that Naraku would really be dead. 

He couldn't die while the other was still alive.

He'd managed to get away from the fray long enough to track down Sango in her latest stop on this fruitless journey. He begs her, when he can find her, to come back to the group. He tells her all manner of reasons, all true, but he never says it's because he is afraid.

Her eyes grow ever more empty the longer she pursues the dream, and he knows that she could easily die and go on searching. This is the sort of journey that devours lifetimes. He wanted, Oh how he wanted, to be able to slow everything down. To follow her, bring her back by his side, to make things right. He can't.

He can't make her see reason and he can't give up what he must do for what he wants. He can't make wishes on jewel shards or find glory in war. The world doesn't work like that. In the end everything comes crashing down around you, unless you work to hold it up and sometimes even that isn't enough.

He knows this, but it doesn't mean he can't want for more. He wants: A life, a love, a family of his own, something so much more substantial then a tryst begetting an heir and a fight that never ends. He wants Sango to realize she is chasing a ghost and that there is so much more in the world for her to live for. If he could he would lie down and let the air devour them both. If he could...

**Sango **

* * *

There is an explosion of light and color, a pulsating noise that wakes her from her dreams, a new and varied demon for every day of the week. There is a town, so secluded it is a miracle she's found them in time, a fiercer uglier battle and ever more praises for every day of the week. Her brother, though, where is he? 

Kohaku is on the wind. He moves just ahead of her like a taunting scream, pulling her on, and she grits her teeth and follows. She falls into the trap with all the muster of the damned, as if there is no choice, as if there is no hope.

She walks into a trap with a grim determination. She holds her head high.

"Demon-slayer!" They say, and they put up their hands in relief. All the world is falling into darkness as the battle with Naraku wages on, and anyone who can fight has abandoned them to push back the darkness elsewhere. "Help us!" They say, and she does, because she can, and because it helps her push on in the direction she wants to go.

There is no room in the equation for good and evil, or right and wrong. There is nothing left at all for love.

"Do you have any news to send back to the others?" The monk asks. He is brisk, worn from battle, and here on a hunch that he'd find her. She wonders how far out of his way he has gone. She wonders why he bothers when the others clearly don't any longer. She does not ask any of this.

"No, there is nothing. I'm close. Just a while longer now," She says. She can feel it. Just a little while longer and she will see him. He will be standing right there as she enters a village among the hopeful faces, or he will be floating on the wind with Kagura, a wicked glint in his possessed eyes... She can feel it. Just a little while longer.

**Miroku **

* * *

"She's not right. Naraku has gotten to her," Miroku tells the others. "There is less then a glimmer of the girl, we know, left." 

No one has anything to say for a long while. Kagome shoots a worried look to Inuyasha, who scowls in response. There is nothing to be said. Their friend is lost to them.

She had sat on the ground for hours holding her dead brother in her arms when Naraku removed the jewel shard. She had cried and begged it not to be so. She soaked the blood from the wound in his back into her clothes, and wept. She was gone before they buried him.

It took Miroku ten days to find her that first time. She was sitting on the remains of a demon she had slain repairing the damage to her weapons. She told him her plan to find her brother. She wouldn't hear he was gone. She was probably lost even then, but he kept looking for her.

At first he thought he could talk some sense into her. He thought she would have to see, eventually. Kagome said it wasn't uncommon for a person to be in denial when they are faced with such astronomical grief, but he couldn't understand this sort of denial. He couldn't believe it was possible to forget that you saw someone die, to deny something so obviously true.

He wanted her to face the impending doom, just to prove she knew the world still existed.

"We need to get in there and fight. All this talking is a waste of time," Inuyasha stomps away, because he knows there is nothing left to say. Miroku follows, the others forming a group behind him. They have an idea of where Naraku is held up. They need to attack while he is weak and they have the upper hand. Sango would have to wait. If there was still a tomorrow he would try again then.

**Sango**

* * *

She woke up in a cold sweat. The dream she'd been having already forgotten. There was time enough to worry about that niggling something later. Today she knew she would find Kohaku. Sango could just sense that he was near. Call it a sister's intuition. 

She catches a glimpse of her face in the water as she cleans it and hardly recognizes it for the lines. Is she really that person? There is so very little inside her that she recognizes. Everything is being pushed back and down by the desire to find her brother, but they have been apart too long. This has all gone on so long. She no longer wants revenge for what has already been done... It seems a waste. She just wants to find him, again. There is a pain inside her that keeps telling her he is lost.

When she crests the hill and sees Miroku her heart catches in her throat. How long has it been since she really saw him? He'd been coming by and trying to talk her into or out of something she didn't want to hear. She hadn't looked at him, really looked at him in so long. They have both aged so much in so few years.

He isn't coming toward her now. He hasn't seen her. He isn't seeking her out, for a change. He's crouched low, holding his right hand in his left, a heavy bead of sweat has collected at his brow. His lips are moving, the words, just loud enough to reach her ears: "Not now, not yet."

"No!" She reaches him just as his knees hit the ground. Her vision clear for the first time in far too long. The lines on his face are suddenly horribly real, the wrinkles in his clothing, the bandage covering his arm. How long had she gone not seeing all this?

"Not yet," he whispers again, looking up at Sango as she approaches. "I can't go yet. I'm not ready."

She collects him in her arms. His head hits her shoulder. His breaths are rapid and shallow, a side-effect of the pain. A warm and heavy weight settles over her heart. This was how she lost Kohaku.

"Not again... Please not him," she whispers, not even sure to whom she is pleading.

**Miroku**

* * *

When he wakes up his first thought is that his arm is on fire. There is a burning numbness stretching from where his fingers ought to be to his shoulder blade. He wants to move his hand, but can't remember how. He wants to open his eyes, but the sensation is too much for it yet. He vaguely realizes he is groaning and stops abruptly to lick his dry lips. 

"Miroku?" Sango's voice is calm, but there is worry underneath; a sort of emotional undercurrent that makes his heart speed up. If there wasn't so much immediate pain he would just be so thankful that Sango no longer sounded haunted and monotonous. For now, though, he was trying to figure out what was going on.

"I've severed your right arm," She continues matter-of-factly. "The others have been battling Naraku. I thought it the best way to give you time."

"Am I dead?" It seemed a perfectly logical question before he voiced it. Now that it was said it seemed pretty obvious he wasn't, so he opened his eyes.

Sango was kneeling in front of him. She was covered in, what he realized must have been, his blood. Her brow was furrowed in concern, but her lips were twisted up in morbid amusement at his question.

"No," She replied, "Not as of yet."

"Is Naraku?" He asked, coming to his senses.

"I think he just might be," he hears her say as darkness takes him again.

**Sango**

* * *

She helps Kagome as best she can. A lot of what is wrong is irreversible, but Kagome does not miss a single scratch on Inuyasha's body. He looks like a ball of bandages with little ears sticking out at the top. Kagome is cheerful, in a way that seems just this side of manic. Sango wishes she could say something that would make it all better, but she doesn't have anything to offer except a silent hand upon the other girls shoulder. 

Naraku is gone. Just like that. It seems too easy to be true. Naraku, this terrible thing that haunted their every waking moment for so long, this nightmare in waking times, is gone. Just like that.

Kohaku is gone, too. She knew on some level, all along, that he was. It took almost losing someone else to wake her up to it, though. Now, with Inuyahsa and Miroku laying side by side, both pale as snow, she has never been more awake.

"What now?" Kagome whispered, presumably to herself, her arms crossing at her chest in concern.

"We wait," Sango assured her, before she has time to panic, clasping her hand and squeezing in what she hopes is reassurance.

**Miroku**

* * *

When he wakes up again he is alone. He can feel a dull empty ache where his arm should have been, but he knows it isn't there. There is no arm. There is no wind tunnel, and if there is a him, there is no Naraku. 

There is such a weight lifted from his chest that he feels he could float away. If he can pull himself into a sitting position he may give it a try.

"Don't sit up," A voice reprimands him gently. "You need to rest. I was beginning to think you would never wake up."

"So was I," He responds honestly, closing his eyes again, as the owner of the voice settles next to him and places a cool cloth on his brow.

"Those fingers come one inch closer to my backside and I'm taking off that arm, as well," she says without preamble, placing his left hand back at his side. He smiles despite himself, catching her hand in his own before she can set it down.

"I've missed you Sango," he says as loudly as he dares, afraid he will scare her away, or start a fight, but she returns the pressure with a squeeze from her own hand.

"I've missed you too, Houshi-sama."

**Sango**

* * *

She helps Kagome pack up the last of her things. Inuyasha won't admit he is still too weak to help, but Kagome refuses to let him and he has gone off somewhere in a tiff. 

"I'll miss you," Sango says hugging her friend.

"Oh, we'll be back," Kagome says absentmindedly patting Sango's back. "How long do you think Inuyasha will take mama doting over him?"

"Not long at all," Miroku answers leaning on the wall of the hut he has just exited. He looks so much smaller somehow. Maybe it is the lonely fabric pinned to his side where his arm should have been, or how pale he still seems. Something strikes her as vulnerable still, but he has proven strong, and she is no longer afraid to go to sleep in case he dies while she is not watching him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Inuyasha asks with a huff, appearing out of nowhere just as they begin to talk about him. Bandages are still peaking out of his collar, but he refuses to slouch or otherwise admit he isn't just as strong as ever, silly stubborn little boy that he is.

"Nothing." Kagome says with a giggle, and the laughter is contagious. Sango feels a smile creep onto her face and crack away what feels like a lifetime of tension.

How can it be, she thinks, as she looks at Miroku smiling slyly... How can it be that everything is so normal.

'Like it should be,' she allows herself to think, and when the world doesn't crash down around her for the thought, she lets out a long held in breath, and smiles even wider.

_As it should be._


End file.
